From the Journal of a San Francisco Bookseller
by Nancy T
Summary: Magic, mystery, romance. Written in response to the PaigeOC Femmeslash challenge on the Charmed Challenges forum. Please note rating. Chapter 5 is up!
1. July 15 and 18, 2002

_The television show "Charmed," including the characters of Piper Halliwell, Phoebe Halliwell, Paige Matthews, and Leo Wyatt, is copyrighted by Spelling Television, Inc., a subsidiary of Spelling Entertainment Group, Inc._

_This story takes place just before Season 5, right after Paige has quit her job at the social services agency. If she actually quit during the first episode of Season 5, please forgive the writer with no long-term memory._

July 15, 2002

She came in today, the kind of sexy free spirit I cannot keep from wanting, and oh I'm going to have to pour a lot of words into this journal to keep from saying anything to her. I know what Kara would say: "It's the 21st century! It's San Francisco, for God's sake!" Well, the fact that I happened to be born in a town with a lot of weirdos doesn't make me any more eager to flaunt my own weirdness.

Because it is weird. Let's face it. The vast majority of the people in the world desire members of the opposite sex. When you're different from the vast majority of the people in the world, you are by definition abnormal. And you can stand around chanting, "Say it loud, abnormal and proud" for days on end, but that doesn't make you normal. It only makes you an embarrassment to the rest of us.

All right, I'm not focusing on her. That's the point. Write the feelings out, maybe they'll go away. I had logged and brought down a few of the books from the second floor to shelve when the door opened. That stupid bell above it that usually makes a kind of clunk sang out like a chime, and I swear a gust of cool fresh air came in with her. "Hi, can I speak to the manager?"

"I'm she," I said. "I'm the owner, Eileen Temple. If it's about the lease, the check literally went into the mail last night."

"Oh, no, I don't want money," she said, and then chuckled. She has a contralto voice, melodious, with a wicked laugh. "Well, actually, I guess I do. I saw the 'Help Wanted' sign in your window?"

"Oh, yes." I'd practically forgotten I'd put it there. "Lately people have just been walking by it like it doesn't exist. I had some help before that, people who would stay on for a couple of weeks and just – leave. I would – Could you stay? I mean, I'd like to have you, to have someone who could be depended on – "

I don't know how long I babbled like this. She watched me with a little smile. Her skin is fairer than mine, that doesn't happen often. Her hair is dark red, worn in a careless full swirl. I always wondered if red hair would work on me, but I know if I tried it I'd wind up coloring my black hair purple or something.

She finally put me out of my misery. "Yeah, I'm looking to stay for awhile. I'm in between jobs right now. Kind of a voyage of self-discovery, you know?"

"Well, I've heard of the concept. Do you have any retail experience?"

She told me – apparently she pretty much put herself through college, mostly working tables, but working as a cashier in some places too. Her schedule is flexible, and minimum wage fine with her.

"It must be an inexpensive voyage of self-discovery," I said.

"Well, I'm not really the main source of income at home, which is – probably just as well." She sounded both rueful and droll.

"Oh," I said. "What does your husband do?"

She looked into my eyes for just a moment, and I know she knew, she knew how my heart dropped as I asked the question. Why didn't she just walk out? Why didn't she tell me, "My God, I haven't even signed the W-4 form and you're already sexually harassing me!" Why didn't she say, "Lady, if I touched you, you'd turn into a block of ice, so why even think about it?"

She just said, "I'm not married. I live with my sisters. One of them owns P3, the nightclub?"

I could only smile and shrug.

"Well, it's successful. And my other sister is Ask Phoebe, the Bay Mirror advice columnist."

"Sounds like you have a lot to live up to."

"You have no idea."

I pulled out the application and W-4 form and got her started filling them out at the little reading table, reading her name upside down as she wrote it. Paige Matthews. "Do you know anything about romance novels?"

"Not much. What I know I got from my friend, Luisa Ramirez. Maybe you know her, she used to work next door?"

"Oh, yes, Luisa was a regular. She came in at least once a week and bought two or three books. I was one of the first people she told when she got engaged."

"Yeah, she has about a million books from this place, I think."

"I miss her. She was so cheerful, showing pictures of her fiancé – "

" – which made it perfectly understandable why she needed the romance novels – "

My laugh just burst out of me, I couldn't help it. "Hey, Luisa adores that man."

"Yeah, she thinks he's a hunk."

"I've heard of a woman wanting a caveman, but I've never known one to take the expression so literally before."

This time she laughed, surprised, the way people are when they figure out that I actually have a sense of humor. I asked how Luisa's doing, and she said not too well – she just called off the marriage. I can't believe it! It was so close, she'd quit her job, had the final fitting on her wedding dress.

Paige said it was definitely strange. "She couldn't really give a reason. Just said something about not deserving to be so happy."

I shook my head and sat down at the table with her. "It's hard to keep a relationship going. There was a married couple who used to work here, filed for legal separation a couple of months after they started. The man who helps me with the bookwork just broke up with his girlfriend."

She raised her hands off the table sharply, as if it were hot. "Sounds like the place is cursed!"

She laughed, but she gave me a direct inquiring look, and I swear I almost spilled all of it right there – the shriveling client base, the employees who seem to grow discontented or depressed within weeks after starting here, the struggle to keep going when businesses right next door are flourishing, the downhill slide after several years of success. I almost got tears in my eyes.

But of course you can't do that. I stood and told her, "This is a romance bookstore, not an occult shop. When can you start, Miss Matthews?"

"Oh, please, Paige. I can start today, if you've got anything for me to do."

I looked over the application. I'm only five years older than she is. We're so different, she probably thinks I'm an aged fuddy-duddy.

I gave her the tour around the shop. The small area where we keep the brand-new books as loss leaders, and the rest of the store where we sell the used books that pay her salary and, with luck, mine. The back office, the alley entrance. The upstairs area, so far behind in the inventory there, I think that's what I'll get her started on tomorrow. Our internet sources of old and rare books, and our own website where we take orders, how we fulfill those and ship them. She's very bright, quick to learn. She really wouldn't need to be working for minimum wage at a failing bookstore. I have the feeling she'd be good at anything she turned her hand to.

I have to stop thinking about her hands, her mouth. The way a strap of her camisole dropped off her shoulder and she didn't even seem to care, not adjusting it for at least ten minutes. If I think about her I'll want her, and I can't want her. It's abnormal. And she wouldn't want me. And even if she did, I don't deserve to be that happy.

July 18, 2002

This may actually work out! I was afraid I'd bother her or be too distracted to work around her, but she spends most of the day upstairs listing the books from the big donation for the inventory, while I do the internet orders and greet every customer who comes in. Then every once in a while, she comes down, so pretty and funny, just something to look forward to.

The first time she came down today she asked for a match, and I told her there was no smoking anywhere in the store. She laughed and said she didn't smoke. "I'm trying to burn a couple of white candles up there, and they keep going out."

"I don't think it's the best idea to burn candles around several thousand old paperback books. Why do you want to?"

"Oh, you know, a nice smell. White candles are for peace, purification – "

"I don't think it'll work. I tried to burn incense down here a couple of months back, you know, establish more of a romantic atmosphere. It would never stay lit. If you're trying to drive away evil spirits, I guess we'll just have to walk around with smoking sage."

She was surprised (of course). "You know about burning sage? Are you a Wiccan?"

"Oh, no, not really. Although – " Well, I told her about the occult shop I'd actually thought of opening, how I dismissed the idea once I decided that a romance bookstore would be a more certain money-maker. And I had to tell her, "The very fact that I'm interested in the subject makes me a little nervous. There's a voice in my head that tells me it could only lead to evil."

Her lips parted, she started to say something, stopped. Then she said, "You have a lot of those kinds of voices in your head, don't you?"

"When your voyage of self-discovery ends in a psychiatry license, feel free to ask that kind of question. Until then – " I pointed to the staircase.

She laughed. "Yeah, you're right, totally fair." She started for the staircase, grabbed the railing, then leaned back, her body at an angle to the stairs.

"Except," she said, "if those voices keep telling you that everything you love naturally is evil, you might want to ask yourself how really angelic those voices are."

She swung herself back toward the railing and started up the stairs. I deliberately turned back to the computer, so that I wouldn't watch her climbing in her short skirt.

When did I begin to fear everything about myself so much? Oh, hell, I always did. When the store got successful I started feeling more self-confident, that's all. With the shop failing, I can't help feeling that it's me, something fundamentally wrong with me.

If I can keep focused on the intellectual content of the issues Paige raises, and ignore the humor and intelligence and easy sensuality of the person raising them, well, this whole thing might work out.


	2. July 27, 2002

July 27, 2002

Oh, my God, I hope it's not happening to Paige too. I swear I'd almost rather she quit than stay and sink into the unhappiness that seems to clot around me.

She's only worked for me, what, 13 days. Nine, really, since she had three days off and a day she took off to attend to a family emergency. But she came dragging in this morning in a way that reminded me of that college girl who used to, Cathy, that was her name, who dropped out of college a few weeks after she started work at the store.

"Are you feeling all right?"

"Yeah. No." She dropped down at the reading table. "Who the hell do I think I'm kidding, anyway?"

"About what?"

"Oh, trying to be the best – " she glanced up at me – "person in the world. Thinking I'm going to dash around and save people. Jumping at hunches."

I didn't understand a word of it, of course, but I sat down with her and tried to look open and sympathetic. She said, "I've been working on a project for a couple of weeks, and I haven't made any headway on it yet."

"You mean the inventory?"

"No, I'm making headway on that. Those books that I took home, by the way, to try to bone up on the authors and the kinds of romances, I want to go ahead and buy those. Is there an employee discount?"

"Sure, twenty percent."

She nodded absently.

"Well, could I help with the other project?"

She shook her head. "No, this was supposed to be my big solo tour-de-force, show everyone." She looked up at me as though she were telling me something she shouldn't be. "See, I only started living with my sisters last year. I only found them last year. I'm actually their half-sister. Long story."

"Does the project involve them?"

"No. It probably should. I don't know what made me think – "

There was a long moment of silence, and then she told me, "My sisters – there used to be three of them. The oldest one was, oh, kind of the leader in everything. I used to see her around P3, six kinds of confident. And the things they tell me now – she was smart, she was a born leader, she was – "

"Was?"

"She died. Right before I found them, or actually they found me. And now here I am, living in the same house, eating at the same table, reading the – same books, and I just know I'll never measure up. I'll never be the w – woman she was. And even a year later, I keep getting the feeling that they look at me and wonder why I'm there, why she couldn't have lived and I couldn't have been the one to – "

"No. No. From what you've told me about them, no. Of course, they miss her. But they sound like strong loving women. If she were alive, they would love you both. And of course she still has a place in their hearts, but that doesn't mean you don't."

She pressed both hands to her face. "This really isn't like me, you know? I just can't seem to stop thinking about it. I keep thinking that I don't deserve them as a family, that I don't deserve to be happy."

"You do. You do. I've never known anyone who deserves it more. You bring so much happiness to others."

"You think so?"

"You bring happiness to me." I actually said that, and without flinching or looking away from her. But I added quickly, "And I'm sure you bring happiness to your sisters, too. The only thing that would cause them pain would be if they thought you were in pain because of them."

She sat up straighter. "You know something, you're right. And it's pretty ironic that you'd figure that out before I would."

"Well, you've told me quite a bit about them."

"No, it's more than that. You have real insight into people, Eileen, I've been noticing it."

I laughed and put my hands on the table so I could push my chair back, and at the same time I said, "Great. If I'm so smart, why ain't I rich?"

And she put her hand on mine. I think she said something like, "I hate to sound like a fortune cookie, but there are different kinds of wealth." I really don't know. Everything else was blurred by her cool light touch. My skin, I'm sure, felt hot to her in comparison, dry. I smiled up at her, waiting for her to pat my hand and move away, but she kept the contact, meeting my eyes and tilting her head slightly as if she were asking an unspoken question.

I should have moved my hand away but I couldn't make myself do it, and for the longest moment she didn't either.

"I'm sorry. What did you say?"

That was when she moved her hand, standing. "I said you're rich in insight, Eileen. And other things."

I didn't trust myself to stand steadily yet. "Well, I know enough to know that it's ridiculous when you say you don't deserve to be happy."

"I'm embarrassed about that. I promise I'm normally not whiny. I don't know where – "

She stopped dead, lips parted for the next word, a look of sudden recognition on her face. I actually looked around to see what she was seeing before I realized she was having some kind of inner epiphany.

And suddenly she was businesslike. "Eileen, thanks for the ego boost, what do you say I repay you by actually getting some work done around here?" She grabbed her purse, bent to give me a quick hug, and practically ran up the stairs.

I drew a deep breath. Then I noticed that she'd left her car keys on the table.

I struggled with myself for a moment. If I took the keys up to her, would she think I was asking for more contact, chasing her? Then I decided that this was truly fourth-grade behavior, picked up the keys, and started up the stairs. Where I did something so enormously fourth-grade that I don't want to admit it even in here. I eavesdropped.

Paige was saying, "Eileen helped me get it."

I stopped and just listened. She was on her cell phone, obviously, and near the top of the stairs, but someplace where the railing prevented her from seeing me.

If I'd heard anything truly personal, I'd be even more ashamed than I am. Fortunately I didn't, and I don't even understand what I did hear. I want to put it down, though, as accurately as I can, see if it makes any sense later. If I'm the kind of controlling bitch who eavesdrops on phone calls, I may as well try to understand them.

She said, "I was right, I've been right all along.

"No, forget what I said this morning. I was all screwed up this morning, and it wasn't just by chance. I told Eileen just now, 'I don't deserve to be happy.' The exact – hush, I know, just listen. That's the exact thing, word for word, that Luisa said to me after she called off her wedding.

"No. I mean, the mode of transmission is pretty obvious, but exactly how –

"No, not a chance. If anything, she's an innocent. And I know that's what Phoebe would have said about Cole, but in this case –

"That's not a weird – As a matter of fact, Piper, that's really not a weird comparison at all. Can you – Do you think you can – handle that?

"That's what I'm saying. But if you'd just as soon I not mention it –

"Yes, she is.

"Thanks, Piper. I knew if I told Phoebe she'd be OK with it, but I didn't know if you –

"You're right, you're right. I will write on the chalkboard one hundred times, 'Piper is the coolest of the cool.'" A contralto chuckle.

"Are you going to need me for that thing?

"OK, I'll be there. See ya."

After a moment's silence I called up the stairs, "Paige?" and continued on up to return her keys.

What on Earth did she mean that Luisa Ramirez was innocent of?

Maybe she meant someone else. And maybe I should mind my own business.

She had to take off this afternoon for another family emergency. That's the only disadvantage to having her at the store – she's bright, she works hard when she's there, but I've never known anyone with so many family emergencies. I'm assuming this is a fairly recent development. Maybe there's something wrong with either Phoebe or Piper, and that's why Paige had to disrupt her self-discovery voyage to bring in some extra income. If I get to know her better, I'll ask.


	3. July 31 and Aug 7, 2002

July 31, 2002

I take it all back. I don't care what anyone says. I don't care what I said. Or thought. I'm not abnormal, I'm in love and I'm happy, and maybe those people with their demands for marriage and their parades aren't just an embarrassment to people like me. Maybe they have a point.

I need to stop babbling and start writing. I want to remember this, every moment, although really I don't think it'll be a problem even years from now.

Day before yesterday, closing time, Paige was finishing up some internet orders when I went over and pulled out the bag for the bank deposit.

"Want me to lock up?" she asked, and I said sure, might as well. She locked the back door and then came back to lock the front door, pull the blinds and turn off the "Open" sign. While she was doing this I pulled the cash tray out of the drawer and pretty much finished the counting; the total wasn't great.

She stood by the computer next to the cash register. "The books I just ordered, they were specific requests from people?"

"Mm-hm."

"Where does the inventory for the store itself come from?"

"Different places. You've seen people come in and trade a bunch of their used books for a store credit. Estate sales, sometimes. Donations."

"Donations? People just walk in and give you books?"

"Well, not so much 'walk in.' Usually it's someone who's moving, cleaning out the basement, or somebody's aunt died and the executors have discovered that she had about five hundred romance novels stashed in the spare room. They'll call and say, if you'll come take them away, you can have them."

"That's nice."

"Well, it's books. People don't like to just throw them out. They think it's wasteful, or they think about how much they loved reading when they were little, or they think how happy Aunt Edna would have been if she knew her books were finding good homes. All kinds of reasons why people want to keep books circulating."

"Yeah. I can see that. Wow, five hundred romance novels, though. Makes you wonder how happy Aunt Edna could have made some guy if she hadn't been devoting herself to Lance Studley the bodice-ripper."

I laughed, zipping up the bank bag. "You'd think that. But from what I read, it seems to work the other way around. Apparently romance novels actually stimulate a lot of people's love lives. People need their fantasies, you know."

"Yeah?" she said, as I closed the cash register and turned around. "What do you fantasize about?"

It was a deliberately provocative question asked in a deliberately provocative tone. There was a little sideways smile on her beautiful mouth. And she was blocking my exit from behind the counter.

A rush of feeling went through me, physical and emotional. I couldn't move and couldn't meet her eyes. And I couldn't dodge the question.

"I try not to," I said.

She nodded. "So you never think about – "

Very gently, very delicately, her cheek began to slide along mine.

I don't even know how it happened, just suddenly she was against the wall and I was against her, tasting her, smelling her, my hands full of her, my mouth full of her, not at all gentle or delicate.

I pulled away suddenly in near terror and she laughed and said, "You think that's something?"

She grabbed me and we rocked dangerously against the glass-topped counter, kissing passionately, my hands under her blouse, her thigh pressing mine.

When we broke for breath again she asked, "Your place or mine?"

"Mine's closer," I said.

Is there any way of describing this that doesn't sound like a romance novel cliché? The softness of her lips, the smoothness of her skin? I don't have to describe it, I'll remember every moment of that first time with her. At one point I said – or maybe gasped – "Magical"; and she gave me that wicked laugh and said, "Nah. This is better."

August 7, 2002

So here I am, facing the end of the bookstore as I know it, and even now my memory's too fuzzy to grasp clearly what happened. I'd swear off margaritas, but I really don't know how they could have caused it. They've just made me hazy about figuring out what exactly happened.

Paige came down just as I was ringing out a customer, waited until she'd left, and told me, "Dinner out tonight, and you're buying."

"I am? Why?"

She opened her arms from elbows to fingertips, a gesture of accomplishment, a CD between two fingers. "The upstairs inventory is done."

I applauded. "I thought that would take one person much longer!"

She handed me the CD. "I just need that store stamp now. A few of the books up there don't have it."

I panicked just a bit. "I thought I gave that to you when you first started."

"Not the name-and-address stamp. The one that says 'Ex Libris.'"

"We don't have – Oh, those." I knew exactly what she was talking about: a stamp well centered on the title page,the words 'Ex Libris' in a distinctive font. The end letters were the longest, with the letters getting shorter and shorter toward the middle, so that if you drew a pencil under the words of the stamp you'd be outlining a half-circle. There was no line for the owner's name, and the half circle under the words certainly wouldn't have allowed enough space to write a name, although if you had a little round stamp for an initial it might have worked. "That was something the previous owner put in. The big donor."

"The big donor?"

"She came in about seven or eight months ago and donated about 6,000 books. That's mostly what you've been inventorying."

"Six – thousand." It was funny, it was like she made a mental transition between the two words. When she said "Six," she was just starting to repeat what I said, in surprise; then there was the slightest pause, and when she said "thousand" it was like there was something fascinating about the word.

"It was amazing," I said. "I didn't even have to go get them. She pulled up to the back entrance with a small U-Haul. And you've seen their condition. Except for that stamp and a little wear on the corners, they look like new. If she'd tried to sell them to me for cash I'd have thought they were stolen, but she just gave them to me."

Paige nodded. "All kinds of reasons why folks want books circulated, isn't that what you last week? Did she say why she wanted these out in the general population?"

Normally, of course, I wouldn't have remembered one remark from someone I saw once months ago, but it's not every day that someone walks in and boosts your inventory by more than 50. "She said something about – her gift to the passionate people of the world. Something like that."

"Do you remember her name?"

"Dalayne, Dalayna, I think. I've never seen her since, you know. I started to fill out a receipt, and when I turned around she was gone."

"So let me guess," Paige said. "She's read 6,000 romance novels – she's got blonde curly hair and dressed all in pink frilly stuff, right?"

I laughed. "You should know better than that, from just the time you've been in here. We get all kinds. She was solemn. Straight dark hair, dark suit, very dark makeup. Kind of a goth business executive, if you can imagine that."

"Strangely enough, I can," Paige said. I bet she went through a goth period herself.

I told her that I'd been putting Dalayna's books in with the store's inventory relatively rapidly, but of course I wanted to inventory them first, and it was about that time when my staff started turning over and I could never keep anyone long enough to get through them all. Probably about a fifth of them, however, had been logged and sold, another fifth were in the store, and the rest were still upstairs. When I could get them downstairs, they flew off the shelves. People love getting a new-looking book at a used-book price. Even when my regulars began showing up less and sales dropped off, the books from the big donation moved well.

Paige asked if she could take off an hour early, said she had some research that she needed to do. I said yes. And then just before she left, she asked the oddest thing. "If the store – if you ever decided to close the store, what would happen to the books?"

"You mean when it goes under?" I meant that as gallows humor, but it came out sounding just grim. "I'll sell as much as I can, maybe have a going-out-of-business sale, maybe contact other dealers and see if they're interested in the inventory. Why?"

"So the books would keep circulating, just from someplace different."

"Sure. What's this about, Paige?"

"Just curious. Don't forget, dinner's your treat tonight."

"I guess I can afford La Cocina. So – your research won't take too long?"

"No, Piper and Leo have some kind of romantic date night planned. I'm just going to – read up on stuff. I'll meet you there at 6:00. If I'm not there, just order without me, I'll be on my way."

When she wasn't there at 6:15, I ordered, but just a margarita, which I drank on a nearly empty stomach. Bad idea for anyone, especially someone who drinks as little as I do. My brain was screaming at me, though, and I wanted to shut it up and relax. How long can I keep the store afloat? What do I do when I finally have to shut it down? Why do I care, I'm in love! Sure, I'm in love with someone that I can't introduce to anybody and can't talk about. "It's San Francisco, for God's sake!" Well, that was Kara, and this is me. Still, fear of other people's reactions should not be the first thing you think about when you consider the person you love. Unless you really are ashamed and you're just not admitting it. Does Paige suspect that I feel ashamed? Will we make love tonight? Will she even be here for dinner? What on Earth do her sister's and brother-in-law's plans for the evening have to do with the amount of time Paige will spend researching? Researching what? There's so much she doesn't tell me, I know that, and I shouldn't feel threatened, but I'm still afraid that I just don't deserve this happiness, and it's the only joy in my life right now –

Well anyway, I was on my second margarita when Paige arrived and we ordered dinner. Then I ordered a third, but thank God I had the sense not to take more than a few sips of that. Paige doesn't drink, but I got the giggles and I think gave her a contact high. I'm pretty sure I annoyed the couple at the next table, and I know that outside the front door I turned my ankle and said the f-word with force. Paige started laughing and I did too, leaning on her for support.

I said I was in no condition to drive and Paige said, "You think?", which set us both off again, and then Paige said she'd take us both back to her house and we could come back for my car in the morning.

It's on the drive over to her house that my memory starts getting hazy. No, not hazy, it seems like details come clearly enough, just weird. I'm just going to put everything down as I seem to remember it, and maybe it will all make sense in retrospect.


	4. August 7, 2002

I was nervous about meeting her sisters, and then I got inwardly defiant, and then it turned out to be irrelevant. If anyone was around, they weren't evident. We giggled and "Ssh"ed our way up the stairs to her room like a couple of schoolgirls sneaking cigarettes.

While Paige was down the hall taking a shower I looked around her room. I love the girl, but God help anyone who ever hires her as a housekeeper. Of course, with multiple interests and a relatively small room, anyone might have a clutter problem. Art supplies, including an easel folded up in the corner; several dozen CDs, most in a rack but a lot of them just scattered around the CD player, everything (in terms of both time and genre) from Peggy Lee to Nelly (marked lack of classical music, though – nobody's perfect); books about the occult and witchcraft – that's why she was so interested in my original occult-shop idea! – as well as tarot cards and a chart of moon phases; cosmetics, jewelry, and accessories on top of the bureau banking up around the pot of a carefully cultivated bonsai tree.

Two pictures, prettily framed, have a place of honor on her nightstand where the reading lamp shines on them. One is of a pleasant looking couple in their early to mid-40s, nicely dressed, maybe a photo for a church directory or some such. I assume these are her late parents. The other is of Paige with two other young women, whom I assumed were her sisters. It looks like someone said something funny just as the picture was taken; all three of them are either on the verge of or bursting into laughter. Looking at it, Scrooge would smile.

There were five paperback books on an upside-down crate with a white candle on either side of them and a big chunk of quartz crystal sitting on top. Those were the romance novels she'd bought from the store. Wondering what her selections might reveal about her, I picked up one, and noticed a pungent smell about the book immediately.

It didn't take much investigation; there was a blob of something sticky, with a strong herbal smell, on the title page, covering the "Ex Libris" stamp we'd talked about just that afternoon. And there was something else, a circular symbol nesting in the previously empty half-circle beneath the words.

It was a ring, broken in several places, and inside a symbol or an abstract design, can't really reproduce it, but it somehow made me think of petals being cut off flowers or wings being pulled off butterflies. Just looking at it brought back the clammy despair I'd felt about the shop, myself, everything.

I looked at the other books' title pages. All of them had been daubed with the sticky stuff. Four out of five had the "Ex Libris" stamp and the disturbing symbol underneath. The one without the stamp bore no symbol.

Well, that was as much as I could bear to look at them. I re-stacked the books, put the crystal back on top, and sat on Paige's bed facing away from the crate.

I know, I know, those books were mine originally, and whatever Paige put on them simply revealed the symbol like some kind of invisible ink. But I couldn't help thinking: Of course. If she accepts me there must be something wrong with her, I should have known that, some weird satanic cult fixation. I didn't want to ask her about it, didn't even want to think about it, certainly not both drunk and depressed.

The door clicked shut, and I looked around as Paige said, "Mm, I love feeling clean and warm."

She was teasing me, posing against the closed door, wearing a slightly sheer and very short white nightgown. To me, at least at that moment, she looked the opposite of satanic.

"Oh," was all I could say at first, then: "Can you go to hell for lusting after an angel?"

She laughed like I'd said something really funny. "Gee, I hope not."

She got onto the bed with me and we kissed deeply, my hands sliding and bunching and I'm afraid damaging her gown. She responded in kind. In a couple of minutes she murmured, "You wear way too much underwear."

"Not everyone's as daring as you are."

"You don't kid me. I know how daring you can be."

There's nothing like it, I can't think what else could be, being fully exposed to your lover and your lover to you, every inch of skin responding to touch, every touch building to an intensity that takes you out of yourself, falling asleep in a tangle of bare arms and legs, her shoulder against your lips, your only covering each other.

However, when the door slams open just at midnight and someone pops on the light, it's wildly unnerving.

"Oh!" the woman in the doorway gasped as Paige and I woke sharply, confused, disentangling. "Oh! I didn't realize – uh – Paige, we need – I'm so sorry – uh – Hi, I'm Phoebe, and you must be – "

Another woman stuck her head in the door, summed up the situation in a glance, snapped, "Paige. Attic. Now," and disappeared.

By this time Paige almost had her nightgown on and was reaching for her robe. Phoebe smiled like a hostess whose guest of honor has just been called to the phone and said, "She'll be right back." She stood for a moment more as if trying to think of something else, then fled.

"What's going on?" I asked – pulling the comforter up around me, like that made any difference now.

Paige rolled her eyes in exaggerated unconcern. "Family crisis. What else is new." But then she stopped on her way out, turned and said seriously, "Stay right here. Don't leave the room." And she pulled the door completely shut as she left.

I threw on my outer clothes and opened the door. I'm still a little surprised that I didn't, oh, jump out the window. Being exposed like that, in the most humiliating way possible, has always been one of my worst fears. But I think I didn't react to it more because another fear was predominating. What was so terrible in that attic that Paige would tell me, twice, to stay in her room? And if it was that threatening, why was she going up there in only her nightgown and robe, unarmed, with no power greater than her two sisters to help her?

Looking down the hall in the direction that Phoebe and (I assumed, and correctly) Piper had gone, I could see a few steps leading upward, though I couldn't see what was at the top. I could hear a thump, a crash, women talking in unison.

Then there was a high-pitched screech, a small but definite explosion, a flash of light that lit the staircase clear into the hall.

I don't remember running down the hall and up the stairs, but I must have, because the next thing I remember is standing in the attic doorway and seeing Paige lying on the floor. She was pulling herself up onto her elbows, though, looking vexed but unharmed.

Piper was kneeling on the floor, picking up a big heavy old book that looked to have fallen from a lectern that was lying on its side. Phoebe was trying to pull something metallic out of the wall. She turned when I came in and so I couldn't see the object behind her, but I could see the bleeding cut on her arm.

"What was that?" I asked.

After a moment Paige said forcefully, "We had a raccoon in the attic."

"Big raccoon," Phoebe said. "Huge."

Well, I can understand why they wouldn't want to advertise to a stranger the presence of vermin in their home, but I was looking around for a big raccoon corpse and not seeing one. "Did you shoot it?"

Paige pointed at me. "We set off a firecracker."

Phoebe laughed a trace wildly. "You should have seen him run!"

Piper was stone-faced. "Yep, that's one raccoon that won't be coming back any time soon."

I gaped as Piper righted the lectern and set the book on it. For heaven's sake, Paige told me that Piper's pregnant! "Well – but – you could have hurt yourselves horribly! You could have set the house on fire!"

"It was Paige's idea," Phoebe said.

"Yes, and Paige," Piper said acidly, "do you think it was the best idea to have a guest the night that we set the raccoon trap?"

"I didn't think you were doing it tonight. I thought you and Leo were so busy tonight. I thought we were doing it tomorrow."

"No, that's not what I said. What I said was – "

"Excuse me," I interrupted. "Isn't the main point that the raccoon is gone?"

Phoebe gave me her glowing hostess-with-the-mostest smile. "You're exactly right. Girls, there's no need to fight about this. Our work is done, the raccoon is vanquished, gone, and we can all go to b— We can all go back to doing what we were doing bef— Goodnight."

She couldn't quite meet my eyes, but she gave me a little wave as she passed me in the doorway.

Paige, by now on her feet, joined me at the door but spoke to Piper. "Sorry about the misunderstanding. Don't stay up too late."

"Good-night, Paige."

"Hey, Piper? Thanks for all your help. With, you know, my project."

Piper gave her a smile lit with intelligence and wry humor. "With the obvious exception – really nice work, Paige. Good to see you, Eileen. Hopefully we can meet again under less exciting circumstances."

"They know who I am?" I whispered as we went down the stairs.

"Of course they do," she said, not whispering at all.

When we got back to the room, Paige made something of a show of seduction, flinging her robe over the upside-down crate, but I really didn't think I could handle it with her sisters knowing what was going on, and truth be told, Paige looked pretty tired. We curled up on the bed together, and I slept better than I've slept in months.

And then this morning I opened the store, and didn't notice it at first, even after raising the blinds. It was when I was walking back to turn on the lights in the back office that I noticed a huge gap in one of the shelves, half the books gone. The books on either side of the gap were faintly singed.

There were three much smaller gaps on the shelf above, each just the width of one book. And several similar gaps on the next shelf over. And suddenly I was turning in the middle of the room – how could I have missed it, as obvious as broken teeth in a grin – a big percentage of the downstairs books was gone, and I could see singe and scorch marks where they had been.

I ran upstairs and just stared, and the bell over the front door rang and I went downstairs again, more slowly, leaning on the railing because everything else suddenly felt so unreal.


	5. August 7 and Sept 14, 2002

It was Paige. "Hey there. Did you have time to get a shower after I dropped you off at your car? Or would you like me to hold down the fort while you run home?"

All I could do was fling out my arms and say, "Look!"

Paige looked around. "That's funny. I thought I straightened all these shelves up the other day."

I'm afraid I sounded hysterical. "They're not messy! They're cleaned out! Books are gone! Just missing!"

She looked around, then looked me straight in the eye and said, "Well, that's weird."

"Weird? It's a catastrophe!" I gasped for breath. "Upstairs it's – ninety percent of them are gone. Just a small stack left. And a huge charred mark on the floor."

"Hey." Paige snapped her fingers. "I sorted out those Ex Libris books yesterday from the ones that didn't have the stamp – remember, I thought I needed to stamp them? I'll bet it's those Ex Libris books that are gone." She started picking books off the shelves at random, flipping to the title pages. "No – No – "

I did the same thing, numbly. And two minutes later Paige said, "I'll bet that's it. I bet you could go though this whole store and not find one book with that stamp on it."

"You did this!"

"Me? Why would I?"

"You were putting stuff on your books at home!" I must have sounded like an absolute madwoman. "You tell me! Why did you? Why would anyone else?"

Paige spoke more seriously and earnestly than I'd ever heard her speak. "OK. First of all, Eileen, I know we haven't known each other forever, but you should at least know by now that I would never, never do anything to hurt you. Do you understand me?"

I caught my breath and, after a moment, nodded.

"Now, who would do it. I don't know. But it strikes me that anyone who's weird enough to drive a U-Haul up to a bookstore and dump 6,000 books there is weird enough to jimmy an old lock and take them back."

"Dalayna herself? Picking her books carefully out from all the others? Leaving scorch marks all over?"

Paige shrugged. "How did you describe her? A goth business exec? Didn't give you her full name and left before you could give her a receipt? Sounds like weirdness to spare. I think we're lucky she didn't just burn down the whole store."

I felt a little calmer, but when I sighed I could hear the shaking in my own breath. "'Lucky.' Almost half my inventory is gone. Oh, well. That much less to get rid of when the store closes."

"You want to close it?"

And the funny thing was, when she asked it, I felt some inner fight in me that I haven't felt in months. Some sort of burden, it felt like, had dropped off me.

"No. I don't want to. But what else can I do? I've got one dependable employee, no customer base, and about half a store of product."

"OK, so you sell romance novels out of half the store. And in the other half – "

"Fitness classes?"

"You sell occult stuff. The way you were planning to before you chickened out. I'm sorry, made the financially sensible decision."

My heart soared, the instant that she said it, but I had to make the arguments. "It would never work. Two entirely different clientele. Braless grad students mixing with suburban mommies."

"Hey, you said yourself yesterday, all kinds buy romance novels. And I know suburban mommies who are into Wicca."

"I would need to get so much."

"I have friends who supply stuff like that. You can get it at a discount."

I turned slowly, looking around.

"Next objection?" Paige said.

"If we accented the positive aspects," I said. "And the romantic aspects. Love amulets. Crystals in the counter. Display them on white satin. Burn pink scented candles – if we can keep them going – "

"Bet we can now," Paige said, almost to herself.

"Fantasy and supernatural romances over there, transition between the two halves of the store. Not death's heads or black crepe. A celebration of personal power, personal magic."

"Well, maybe a little black," Paige said. "You don't want to leave out mystery."

"No. You're right. Magic _and_ mystery." I looked around and we met each other's eyes. "Romance."

Paige nodded with her little sideways smile.

"Lot of work," I said.

"I'll be here," she said. "Uh, except not right now. Speaking of love reminded me. I'm going to make a phone call."

She started for the door and I said, "Tell Luisa hello for me."

She stopped and looked around at me.

"You knew, didn't you? You didn't come here because of a help-wanted sign in the window. You knew Luisa was a regular here, and when she called off herwedding for no reason you decided, somehow, that it had something to do with the store. That there was something wrong with the books, something wrong with me."

She walked back to me and, in the middle of the store in the middle of the morning in front of the uncovered windows, wrapped me in her arms and kissed me.

"Not with you," she said. "Nothing wrong with you at all."

That was all I could get out of her on the subject today. And my guess is, that's all I'll ever get out of her.

The question that I'd really like to ask I can't, because I was drunk enough that she could dismiss it with a laugh. But I remember now how she made a point of dropping her robe on the crate that the books were sitting on after we came down from the attic at her house. And I wonder now, if I'd lifted that robe, would I have seen five books and a crystal? Or a crystal sitting on one book and a scorched crate?

So here I am, facing the end of the bookstore as I know it, preparing to turn it into this strange hybrid creature, more excited and more optimistic than I've felt in months. In some ways, maybe ever.

September 14, 2002

Grand opening tonight, way too tired to go into the details, just that it was very well attended. A midnight gala on Friday the 13th was appropriate, but I have to admit I secretly wondered if I was tempting fate. But Paige's friends turned out, and we got a surprising percentage from the store's mailing list, enough to keep both Carl and Wanda busy. They're neither of them as efficient as Paige was yet, but they're getting there. And in spite of what Paige said last week, it is such a load off my conscience that our relationship is now strictly personal.

Piper and Leo came in – Piper's still not showing, she's going to be one of those who hardly shows at all until the final couple of months and then blows up like a zeppelin. She got a romance novel and told me unconvincingly that it was for a friend of hers. One of my favorite moments of the evening is Leo discoursing, in his earnest-hubby way, on the meanings of different crystals to a pair of haughty would-be vampires wearing black capes and black fingernails. I still can't figure out why such a personable and apparently able-bodied young man can't get steady work. But after that strange night when the Ex Libris books disappeared, and we began having a slow-but-steady upturn in business, I decided, and I suppose it's kind of cowardly of me, but I decided that the less I prod Paige about herself and her family, the less likely I am to learn something that would unsettle our relationship. Don't ask, don't tell, you might say.

Paige went back to the Manor with Piper and Leo. She needs her space, her own room, and I'm doing my best to understand. I knew she was a free spirit the moment she walked in the door, so I can't be surprised when she wants to be by herself. We'll be together tomorrow – I guess tonight, at this hour – and maybe Wednesday.

It's the long term that I don't know about. I know it's micromanaging of me to think about the future when we're just past the stage where we can't keep our hands off each other. But that's what I am, a micromanager. And let's face it, "opposites attract" works wonderfully in romance novels but, at least from what I've seen, it doesn't last that long in real life.

I love what Paige said the other day because it so perfectly characterizes her: "You never know what life is going to throw at you next. But that's what I like about it." The thing is, I don't want a whole lot of surprises out of life. I know what I want, now: Dinner at the same time every night. The same face on the pillow next to mine, every morning. Quiet weekends at wine country bed & breakfasts. Watching silver grow, strand by strand, into my lover's hair.

And that's not what Paige wants now, I know. She may want it someday. Or she may be one of those who runs off with someone else's significant other when she's 60 and gets arrested at a protest rally when she's 70.

But I wouldn't be so aware of our differences, because I wouldn't be able to admit what I want even in this journal, if it hadn't been for her. If I ever do have that long-term, committed, all right let's say it, marriage, I know who I'll have to thank for it.

And if she ever needs someone to put up bail money, she'll know who to call.


End file.
